I only use it when there's no other payment method available. Paypal has been hacked at least twice; plus there have been cases where a payee's account has gotten cleaned out by a third party - which tells me their identity confirmation leaves something to be desired.

It is possible they've cleaned up their act in the last 6-12 months though. But I get the shivers when I talk to people who are using their checking accounts through Paypal.

If someone pays you, be sure to have it deposited in your bank account ASAP!

I had a buyer that decided that he wanted a refund from one of my auctions. Of course he never sent me back the laptop so I wasn't going to refund his money, but paypal took the money from my account anyways. It took me forever to finally get my money back!!!

Paypal itself is pretty trust worthy. If something goes wrong i have heard horror stories of never getting your money back, but that goes back to the trustworthy seller. The HUGE problem with paypal is spoof emails. My grandmother is a 1000+ feedback on ebay and she gets atleast 2 spoofs a day trying to get her to update her password, give a credit card number, all kinds of things. Paypal works great in my opinion, you just have to remember payapl never asks for anything in an email.

Staff Member

Paypal charted new business territory and I'm not surprised there have been glitches along the way. Customer service may not be stellar, but problems are reportedly fairly rare, given the huge volume of transactions. It's a financial service that's very convenient but not without a slight risk of problems. I use it because the alternatives (not using an online payment system or using another service I know even less about) are no better, and I don't deal with huge sums so the small risk of a problem is acceptable to me. I've been lucky to have no problems at all.

I've had up to like $3000 in my paypal account and never have had any problems. The refund system leaves something to be desired but thats one of those rocky roads to cross. I use it just for ebay mostly ...

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